


The center of my universe is in your arms

by MABlake



Series: Between worlds [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canonical Character Death, Clarke Griffin Deserves Better, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Multiverse, Mutual Pining, Panic Attacks, Post-Season/Series 06, Sharing a Bed, travel between worlds
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23567278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MABlake/pseuds/MABlake
Summary: When Hope wakes up and tells everyone that there's a way to bring Octavia back, Bellamy and Clarke must learn how to travel through the anomaly to save her. They know it won't be easy and that they won't find her on the first try, but despite Hope's warnings, they are not prepared to wake up in another world with memories of a life they never had, making their mission even more complicated than it already is.Or, Bellamy and Clarke find out just how entwined their souls are.// Rating could change in future chapters.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake & Clarke Griffin, Bellamy Blake & Clarke Griffin & Madi, Bellamy Blake & Gabriel Santiago | Xavier, Bellamy Blake & Octavia Blake & Clarke Griffin, Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Emori/John Murphy (The 100), Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Between worlds [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1696456
Comments: 24
Kudos: 86





	1. Crossing the door

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, there! Before you start reading, I wanted to give a big thank you to Maria and Thit for helping, and specially Thit for being amazing and having a lot of patience with me <3
> 
> This is the weirdest thing I've ever written, and that's saying a lot after all the things I have in my drafts but I really, really hope you like this. Enjoy!
> 
> Title from Supercollide by Banners.
> 
> You can find the playlist for this story here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5tk0Qi5Sy5gg8ZRkc0yKnc?si=rH6WTKm-R5OCwEn3HiSOSA

“You get me. There’s no other way to put it. When I am a whirlwind of a person, a mess of bad moods and even worse ideas, you move in slow, wrap each of your arms around me and in an instant, I am understood.

When I am blind to all else, I see the way through you.”

—Beau Taplin, An Understanding.

  
The only logical thought in his mind after he loses his sister is **_find Clarke_.**

He’s still in the woods, crying out his sister’s name when they first appear, and they keep repeating themselves in a loop he’s not strong enough to stop. The words stay there, insistent, while he’s tying Hope’s hands and Gabriel and Echo watch him; and later, when he’s helping him carry her unconscious body to Sanctum.

Finding Clarke is the only thing he can think of, the only thing keeping him focused, and his feet are only moving because of it. The rest of his mind is full of wild thoughts that make him dizzy.

Every minute he spends away from her feels like an endless torture. It’s like being on the Ring once again: lonely, and away from the most important people in his life. In a way, it’s exactly like that. Octavia is gone and Clarke isn’t by his side where he needs her. 

He doesn’t blame her for it. She wanted to come with him, but he had taken one look at her face, seen how tired she was and told her to get some rest. They walked away from the crowd until they found a room where no one would bother her and he stayed by her side until she fell asleep. He thought there was nothing she could do for Octavia and had wanted to give her a break after all the things that had happened to her; it wouldn't be fair of him to tell her about the Anomaly when she already had too much in her mind. He wanted to wait. 

He knows that losing her mother isn’t going to be easy for her, and he knew in that moment that the first thing he'd do when he came back was find her and wait until she opened her eyes to ask what she needed.

He wasn’t expecting to lose his sister in a brief trip to the woods.

Bellamy shakes his head, trying to clear his mind and focus on the disaster at hand.

While he walks he has the sudden, irrational fear that Clarke is gone, too. That she won’t be waiting for him when he arrives. He shakes that away, too. Or at least he tries to. 

He must look as desperate as he feels because the moment they arrive at Sanctum, Gabriel stops him with a hand on his arm and tells him to go.

Bellamy turns to him in surprise. The other man just nods, encouragingly. “Go,” Gabriel repeats, firm and soft despite everything. “We’ll take care of Hope and we’ll wait for you before we decide anything.” 

He doesn’t want to ask how Gabriel knows what he needs right now; the understanding in his gaze is already too much without putting his thoughts into words; Bellamy just nods in thanks.

He’s glad there’s someone who’s trying to help, even if all the help he needs is behind closed doors, sleeping. It doesn’t even matter that she doesn’t have the answers that can help him find his sister; he needs someone who can understand how much Octavia means to him, despite everything that has happened between them, someone who can understand who he is at his core. Just hearing her voice will probably be enough to calm him down and return his breathing back to normal; to clear his mind long enough to decide the next step he's going to take to get his sister back.

“I’ll take her to the lab,” Gabriel adds, before he leaves.

Bellamy stops in his tracks. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

The other man frowns. “Why? We can have privacy there and—”

“I’m pretty sure that’s the place where they took her to—” He shudders just thinking about it, and has to take a deep breath, close his eyes for a second. When he opens them again, Gabriel is looking at him with something like understanding in his eyes. It makes Bellamy feel exposed, but he can’t dwell on it too much right now. “I don’t really know what happened to Clarke when she was here alone pretending to be Josephine, or before they put the mind drive in her head. She just lost her mother; I don’t want to make it harder for her.”

Gabriel nods. “I know a place,” he suggests, and then proceeds to tell him how to get there. Bellamy nods when he finishes explaining, already anxious to get to Clarke.

“I’ll see you in a few minutes,” he tells them after, and walks in the direction he left her. 

Echo huffs, but he doesn’t turn around. He has more important things to worry about than understanding whatever reason she’s mad.

But it turns out that their priorities are not the same, and she catches up with him, tugging at his arm until he relents and lets her guide him to a corner between two buildings. They end up face to face and their closeness is almost suffocating for him; he wants to walk away without a word, but he takes a deep breath and stays where he is.

“Echo, we have to hurry. We don’t have time for whatever this is,” he tells her. The anxiousness that has been building inside him is getting worse and worse with every second, and he feels like he doesn’t have enough air to breathe, enough space to exist. He’s at his breaking point and he doesn’t want to say something he’ll regret later. He doesn’t even look at her, he can’t stay in place. “My sister—”

“You mean the same woman you left in the wild of a strange planet for our safety? Now she’s your sister again?”

He freezes, stops looking at their surroundings and focuses his gaze on her. It’s only now that he notices how mad she looks. Now really isn’t the time, but it looks like it's going to happen anyway. “What?”

She shakes her head, jaw clenched and eyes fierce. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever happened in that forest while you were gone—you can tell me about it later. What I want to know is what the hell you think you are doing _now._ ”

“I’m trying to figure out a way to get my sister back! What are _you_ doing?”

“I’m trying to have a conversation we should’ve had weeks ago.”

He shakes his head and starts walking away. “I really don’t have time for this.”

She steps in front of him and puts her hands on him to stop him. Her touch on his chest burns and all he wants to do is shake her away. He can't stand her touch.

“You should let her rest,” Echo says. “You don’t need her help. You have Raven and Gabriel, and this… new girl. Maybe I can’t help you find your sister, but they can.”

“This is not the Ring anymore. We need Clarke to survive.”

“No, Bellamy. _You_ need her to survive.”

“And what if I do, huh?” he practically growls. “What if I need her?”

Her eyes widen, and she takes a step back, her hands falling away from his body. He feels like he can breathe again.

“Then we are done.”

He falters for a second and frowns. He has trouble understanding whatever mess is going on in her head. “What?”

“I stupidly thought that you were desperate to save her because… you were leaders together before you left Earth when Praimfaya happened. Because I didn’t understand—I never understood the bond you had with her. And I tried to convince myself that was it. That she was your friend and you owed her for saving your life; that all you wanted to do was to pay her back for the sacrifice she made for all of you when she stayed behind to die. Maybe even for my Heda—for Madi. Or just because you always want to be the hero of the story, and you couldn’t let her die. But you’re still looking out for her, even though she doesn’t need you to, even though your debt is already paid, and you—”

“This isn’t about any debt,” he interrupts, horrified. “This has never been about—”

“I know that now,” Echo snaps. She shakes her head, gives him a humorless smile. “I couldn’t understand the reason you forgave her so easily for leaving you to die in the fighting pits until Murphy told me that you were willing to burn Sanctum to the ground when you found out she was dead. I couldn’t lie to myself anymore after that.”

He’s speechless for a second.

“How couldn’t you understand something like that? I lost her for six years! I thought she was dead when I closed the door of that rocket and told Raven to take off—when I saw the Earth burning through the window, I thought I’d never see her again. What do you think I should’ve done when we arrived to another place and someone killed her for the same reason she survived before?” he asks, incredulous. “Go to another party and smile as if nothing happened? Accept to eat with the Primes and sit in front of the woman using Clarke’s body?”

“You were willing to destroy our chance for a better future— _for her_!” she accuses him. He doesn’t bother denying it, doesn’t think that saying that he didn’t kill Russell because he thought that it wouldn’t be what Clarke wanted is going to make things better for them. “You said we were going to look forward and not back, and you couldn’t even listen to your own words when Clarke was in danger—”

“She wasn’t in any danger! They took her away from me!”

She freezes at his words, and it takes him a few seconds to understand the reason for it. The implications are too strong this time to let it go and pretend it didn’t happen. He didn’t say _their people_ , or _Madi and Abby_ , just— _him_. They took her away _from_ _him_.

“Tell me something,” she asks, after a second of shocked silence. “When we were on Earth, I was about to kill her. I fought with her, and I could have snapped her neck, just like that,” she says, matter-of-fact, like it’s nothing, but his blood runs cold and he almost stops breathing again. “You forgave me for Mount Weather and your sister. Even for betraying you. Would you have forgiven me for that?”

He swallows, and the task is harder than it should be thanks to the lump in his throat. The urge to find Clarke grows stronger by the second; his need to see her and tell her about what happened to his sister is weakened by his desire to make sure that she’s safe in the same place he left her. The only thing he wants right now is to be far away from Echo.

“I poisoned my own sister when she threatened her life,” he says, the emotions almost choking him. It's hard for him to speak, but he still asks, defiant, “What do you think?”

Echo blinks in surprise before she steps away from him. He shakes his head, doesn’t even care for her answer right now. They both know what this is, know what it implies.

“I have to find Clarke,” he says, finally walking away.

She lets out a laugh, bitter and disbelieving. “Of course you have to. We are done, Bellamy.”

He nods and doesn’t even bother to look behind him. He knows she’s not going to follow him. Not this time.

* * *

When he arrives to the room he’d left Clarke in and sees how peaceful she looks, the tension filling his body goes away. He hasn't had the chance to see her like this since she slept in Gabriel’s hut, and he hates the fact that for her to get some rest she had to go through something awful before both times. She’s curled up around Madi, almost as if shielding her from harm while she sleeps. He closes the door quietly behind him and takes them in.

The sight of them, both safe and unharmed, brings him to a stop and he feels himself breathe for the first time since his sister vanished in his arms. 

Fuck, _what the hell is he doing?_ If Echo was right about something it’s that Clarke needs to rest after all the things she’s been through in the last couple of weeks. The mess that took place on Earth and everything that followed the moment they arrived to their supposedly new chance to live. Clarke just lost her mother, she doesn’t need him dumping all his problems on her, asking for support or help, but—

He still wants it. But he’ll try to be okay with having—just this, at least. He won’t wake her up, but he’ll draw strength from this moment: the rise and fall from her chest, her face smooth of all the frowns she has the moment she opens her eyes. She looks relaxed, even if it’s just temporary, an illusion. He wishes he could take all her pain away.

But he should’ve known he couldn’t watch her sleep for long. She’d spent a large amount of time fighting for her life; of course she would notice someone else’s presence in the room.

Clarke stirs, and she's frowning when she sits, blinking sleepily at him. “Bellamy?”

The moment her eyes find his, he slumps against the door. He slides down until he touches the floor, and his breathing sounds too loud in the room, the beating of his heart too fast inside his chest.

When she realizes he’s not okay, she’s on her feet in seconds, rushing in his direction and crouching in front of him. Strangely, it reminds him of the day in Gabriel’s hut when she was about to leave on a suicide mission. It’s fitting, he supposes, because he’s going to do something stupidly similar soon.

“Bellamy?” she asks, desperately trying to get him to look at her. “What’s going on? What happened? You’re scaring me.” Clarke takes his face in her hands, her eyes roaming all over his body as if to find an injury that isn't there. He sees every emotion that goes through her eyes: frantic worry, fear, and when she understands that he's not hurt, her gaze fills with understanding and worry. It feels weird, to notice everything even though he’s not really there. “Bellamy, I need you to breathe, okay? Please. I need you to breathe.”

“I just—” He realizes with a start that he’s crying when she gets even closer and wipes away his tears, looking at him worriedly. He takes a shuddering breath, tries to calm down and get the words out but they just don’t come to him. “Octavia. She’s just—she’s gone.”

“Hey, hey, you need to calm down, okay?” she says, swallowing worriedly. “You can tell me all about it later but I need you to breathe first. Bellamy, you have to take deep breaths, just like me.”

“I—I can’t,” he gasps. He pulls his knees against his chest, closes his eyes. It forces her to move, but she doesn't go far; she sits beside him instead. “God, Clarke… my sister is gone.”

He can vaguely hear her talking, maybe to him, maybe to someone else, but he doesn’t understand anything. It’s like he’s underwater. She tries to help him come up for air but it’s not easy.

He doesn't know what he needs until he hears her whisper, “I'm here,” over and over again. “You're not alone, okay? We are going to get her back, Bellamy, but you need to breathe.”

She doesn’t give up until he’s breathing normally again. His whole body falls against the door, weak and defeated before he closes his eyes. His cheeks are damp with tears and he knows that if it was someone else, _anyone else_ , he'd be ashamed of it, but even after all these years, Clarke is still the person that knows him best, and he's never tried to pretend he was someone else with her.

“What do you need?” she asks, and he opens his eyes to see her sitting by his side, tilting her head to his.

He just shakes his head. He already woke her up, and he doesn't want to ask for anything else.

“I'm okay,” he tells her, and that apparently convinces her of the fact, because she relaxes and lets her head fall to his shoulder, breathing against his neck.

“You scared me.”

“Sorry.” He looks to the bed and notices that Madi isn’t there anymore. “And sorry for waking you up. Where’s Madi?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I shouldn’t have come here.”

“I’m glad you did. I’m not sure anyone else knows how to handle a panic attack.”

He huffs a little. “You’d be surprised.” At her questioning look, he closes his eyes, not wanting to look at her when he tells her, “Everyone on the Ark had to learn how to handle one. I wasn’t—” He takes a shuddering breath. “I had a lot of those, after Praimfaya. It’s been a few months since the last one, but—”

She shifts, leaving his side. “Oh.”

Bellamy opens his eyes again and is glad to see that she’s not looking at him with pity, just… soft and understanding. She’s sitting in front of him, cross-legged, waiting for him to talk and it doesn’t matter now that his conversation with Echo left him even more drained than he already was. Her knee is touching his leg and he finds that it’s easier than it should to just say, “Octavia is gone.”

“I got that, but—” She hesitates, and then moves until they are side by side against the door once again. She leans a little against him and he lets out a breath at the comfort she's offering with just her touch and presence. “What happened?”

He huffs. “I don’t even know.” He runs a hand through his hair and sighs before looking at her. “Someone stabbed her, and she was in my arms one second and gone the next. A girl appeared—apparently Diyoza’s child, and—” 

She frowns. “Wait, hold on. _Diyoza’s_ _child_? But—how? Shouldn’t she be like… I don’t know, days old, or—not even born?”

“I don’t know how this Anomaly thing works.” He shakes his head, rubs a hand over his face. “This moon is so fucked up.”

“Every place we’ve been in has been fucked up,” Clarke says, and she smiles a little when his mouth curves in a small smile.

“I guess you’re right.”

Her expression sobers. “So, what’s next? What are we going to do?”

Bellamy clenches his jaw and aches for the help she’s offering. She didn’t even hesitate to say the words, and he feels selfish because it’s something he needs and wants desperately.

“I can’t ask you to—”

“You’re not asking, I’m offering.”

“Clarke—” he tries.

She gives him a little, reassuring smile. “We’ll bring Octavia back.” 

He wants to say a lot of things right now. To thank her, tell her to go back to sleep and that he’ll handle all this mess immediately, that she doesn’t need to worry about anyone else but herself.

He wants to scream that he loves her at the top of his lungs.

Instead, he just keeps his eyes on her and says, “Yeah, okay.”

Someone knocks on the door, and he startles a little. Clarke just reaches out to take his hand and gives him a small squeeze before getting to her feet. She opens the other half of the giant door, and stops whoever is waiting outside with one of her hands.

It's just a whisper, but he can hear Madi when she says, “Here. I'll be with Gaia,” she tells Clarke, and then, a little louder, “I hope you're feeling better, Bellamy.” 

It brings a little smile to Bellamy's lips. It widens when he hears Clarke scold her, telling her to be safe.

When she closes the door, he realizes that she has something in her hands, and then she sits on the floor again, trying not to jostle the content of the cup. She gives it to him. “Come on. Drink something.”

He huffs, but does as she asks.

* * *

When they arrive to the little shelter Gabriel told him to meet him at, he’s kneeling on the floor while he ties Hope’s wrists behind her on a chair.

“I told Echo that she should bring your friends here. She left a few minutes ago,” Gabriel explains when he sees them in the doorway. “I was checking the ropes again after clean this place up a little. It’s old and apparently no one has used it in years. Maybe since the last time I was here.” 

Bellamy nods, but doesn’t say anything. He wanted to deal with things differently, just with Clarke and Gabriel, maybe even Raven and Emori. It seems that doesn’t matter now. 

Clarke goes and kneels by Gabriel’s side and looks up at him with her hands on the rope.

“Is this really necessary? There’s going to be a lot of us against her. Maybe we should loosen her binds.”

“No, we shouldn’t,” Bellamy says, immediately.

“What is she going to do? Stab me?”

The thought makes him shudder. “I really don’t want to test that theory.” 

He tries to swallow his fear, but Clarke sees right through him, eyes softening. She nods, looking at the girl before undoing her binding and tying the rope again, a little tighter than Gabriel. Then she stands and walks towards him. Their shoulders touch and he wonders if she knows how much he needs the contact right now. He wouldn't be surprised.

“Okay, you’re right, she could be dangerous. But we shouldn’t make assumptions. We need to hear what she has to say before doing anything.”

He wasn’t thinking of doing anything else, but she’s looking up at him, soft and expectant and he has no other choice but to say, “Yeah, okay.”

She nods back, and that’s when Hope starts waking up.

The others arrive a couple of minutes later, when Hope is still blinking in awe at them. She has the same excitement that he saw in Jordan's eyes when they first met, and it's like she’s seeing some kind of legend. It makes him uncomfortable. 

Echo is the last to enter, staying close to the exit. He doesn’t blame her for it, and even appreciates the distance. He has his priorities straight and he knows that they need to get Octavia back first, but there’s a fire under his skin that makes him want to scream at her after the things she told him. He looks down at Clarke and searches her neck, but there’s no sign of any marks. It’s then that he realizes with a jolt of guilt that even if she had any, they would be his.

He eyes everyone else, and notices that there’s a softness in Raven’s eyes that comes accompanied with pity and he feels Clarke tensing at his side when she notices, too. He doesn’t look at her—doesn’t even care when he feels the weight of Murphy’s gaze on him—when he moves his hand so he’s holding hers loosely. He’s scared he’s broken their boundaries when she moves her wrist a little, thinking she’s pulling away, but she just holds his hand instead, their fingers entwining. He hears the shaky breath that escapes her mouth and feels some of the tension leaving her body. He squeezes her hand a little for support.

Fuck, he shouldn’t have let her come with him.

(He huffs a little at the thought. As if he could stop her from doing what she wants.)

“Where’s my sister?” he asks; his voice is rough, and this time Clarke is the one who squeezes his hand.

“I don’t really know,” Hope admits.

He takes a step towards her, but Clarke's hold on his hand tightens. When he looks at her, she raises an eyebrow as if to say _you_ _promised_.

His brow furrows and he opens his mouth to say something when Gabriel asks, “Then tell us what happened to her.”

“It’s… complicated.”

“Explain it, then,” Bellamy demands, giving the stranger all his attention. He crosses his arms and regrets it immediately when he realizes he had to drop Clarke's hand in the process. “We have time.”

“Octavia told me you've been studying the Anomaly for years,” Hope starts, talking to Gabriel. “I don't really know how much you know about it, but while we were in there, we could understand it better than you ever could.” She hesitates for a second before saying, “Well, for the most part.”

“How?” Raven asks, skeptically. 

Her eyes brighten, as if talking about it is her favorite thing. “The Anomaly is a door that can take you anywhere. It can drop you off to different worlds and times, but sometimes it can't be your choice. That's why I have no idea where Octavia is,” she adds, to Bellamy. “But I'm pretty sure she's safe.”

“How do you know that? You stabbed her.”“

“I had to do it,” she argues, looking from person to person as if waiting for someone to take her side. No one does. Her shoulders slump. “Our plan wouldn't have worked if I didn't,” she insists. “I care about Octavia. I don't want to kill her and I sure as hell didn't want to hurt her even if it was necessary.”

“Which plan?” Gabriel asks before Bellamy can question anything else.

“She is important for the Anomaly. She said you knew that, too. She's like—” Hope licks her lips and then frowns, as if trying to find the words. “The Anomaly has been waiting for her since it was created. Octavia marks another point in time, like—before and after. She could destroy it entirely if she knew how. We've been trying to find out a way to do that for years.”

“Great, so I'm here trying to be a god and Octavia is the one who becomes a goddess,” Murphy huffs, frowning. “Typical.”

Emori elbows him at that.

“Why would you want to close it?” Clarke asks, frowning and crossing her arms. “Is it dangerous?”

“It's not dangerous all by itself, but—it's a door to anyone who has access to certain information and objects thrown into space and time. They can use it whenever they want, and sometimes it doesn't matter because they're not doing anything wrong. There are a lot of travelers who love to see new universes, or scientists who are curious about how it works, and they are not a threat. But I was born inside the Anomaly because my mom and Octavia couldn't find a way to get out of it before my birth and I was bound to someone since that moment. He's the one who tried to make me kill Octavia; me and Mom—we found a way out of it, I just needed to send her away. The rest is up to her.” She bites her lip. “People like him… people who want to control and manipulate the anomaly are dangerous and can use it in any way they want. Some of them have destroyed cities and worlds. They need to be stopped.”

He takes his time to absorb the information and when he looks at Clarke, she seems to be doing the same thing. She finds his gaze and doesn't look away.

There's silence until Murphy asks, incredulously, “Are we really considering believing all of this? She's talking about Octavia as if she's a goddamn deity like the ones in Bellamy's myths, and she's telling us that she can travel between worlds. It doesn't make any sense.” 

When no one answers, he huffs. “Really, guys?”

“Well, the Anomaly took Octavia,” Gabriel says, lost in thought. “And even though I've tried to figure out how it works, I could only see patterns and all the mess it left behind until she came here.” 

When everyone looks in Raven's direction, she shrugs. “Hey, don't look at me. This sounds crazy, but everything is possible. We spent a lot of time living in a piece of shit in space, we went into cryo-sleep and traveled to another planet—” She stops at that, rolls her eyes. “Well, moon, but you get my point. We survived the end of the world and a lot of wars. This could be the strangest thing we've encountered yet, but with our luck I'm not surprised.”

“When you put it like that, it doesn't sound as crazy, I'll give you that,” Murphy concedes. “But still—different worlds? Come on, guys. How many worlds can exist? Are we going to find little men with blue skin or people with three heads?” He stops at that, thoughtfully. “Well, we had a two-headed deer on Earth but that's totally different.”

“It's not like that,” Hope protests. “There are a lot of planets. Sometimes like this, and sometimes like the Earth you knew or the one from before the war. I don't think we've found aliens crossing the Anomaly, but there are a lot of alternate universes out there.”

“The theory of the multiverse,” Gabriel murmurs, thoughtfully and the woman nods in his direction. Everyone else in the room turns to look at him, and he explains, “Basically, every time we choose something we are creating another universe. It’s like—” He puts his hands on his hips. “There’s another world where no one left the Earth to look for other planets and no one knows about this moon. Another world where I didn’t try to bring Josie back and all the Primes died when they should’ve,” his voice breaks a little and he clears his throat, crossing his arms over his chest, looks from person to person, focusing on Hope. “The theory is that there’s an infinite number of universes out there full of posibilities.” 

Hope nods, “The anomaly is a door to all those other worlds. That’s where Octavia is. There’s someone out there that wants to kill her, but I think—” She bites her lip. ”I don’t know why but… I think he’s dead now.”

Murphy scoffs, “What, now you’re saying that you can _feel_ when someone dies?”

She frowns, maybe at hearing the disbelief in his voice. “It’s hard to explain.” She tilts her head, her hands still bound behind her back, the strands of hair that were on her face falling away. “See all these marks? They protect me and make it easier for me to travel through worlds. The anomaly may be the door, but the marks help me to find the way between them. Octavia and my mother gave me those marks the moment we landed for the first time on another planet, but the anomaly takes something every time you go through it. I told you I am connected to him. I can feel it. He… I don’t really know who he is, or why is he trying to kill us, but I could feel him before. Now I don't. Not anymore. Maybe she finally killed him and now everything is fine.”

“If everything is fine, where is she?” Bellamy demands.

She frowns, blinking in confusion. “Time goes by at a different speed here, but you're right. She should be here by now. I don't know. Maybe she got lost, or—” she trails off, but he can guess what she's thinking. He doesn’t know this girl at all, but he’s familiar with the worry in her eyes, of thinking someone he loves is in danger, or worse.

“I am going to find her,” he announces with determination.

“Bellamy—” Clarke says.

“She's my sister. I'm not going to stay here and wait to see if she comes back or if she's just—lost forever.”

“I know,” she says with a small smile, taking his hand and giving him a reassuring squeeze. “But you have all of us. We are all going to help. You don't have to rush, we'll figure it out.”

He can feel Echo staring daggers at them, and Clarke must notice too because she tenses and tries to step away from him. He doesn’t let go of her hand, and she looks at him in confusion, but stays where she is.

“We are going to find a way to bring my sister back,” he says. “And then I’m going.”

“Um, I just—” Hope interrupts. Her cheeks turn pink when everyone turns to look at her. “Clarke is the one who should go.”

Echo blinks, Raven stares at Hope as if she has grown a second head and Murphy lets out a bark of laughter before shaking his head in amusement and saying, “Of course she should.”

Bellamy’s eyes widen; fear is all he can feel in his chest.

“No way.” When Clarke looks at him, he can see the hurt in her eyes, and feels the way her hand goes slack on his. The last thing he wants is for her to believe he doesn’t trust her so he squeezes her hand a little and rushes to explain before looking at everyone in the room, “The Primes stole her body days ago and she needs to rest after everything that happened. It's not safe for her brain; Gabriel said earlier that she needed to give her body a break,” When his eyes find him, Gabriel nods in agreement but he looks distracted and doesn’t add anything to help him make a point. “I’m not going to let you send her into the Anomaly without knowing what the hell is waiting for her out there. I’m not putting her life at risk.”

“Why do you need her?” Madi asks from where she’s standing at the door. Her voice is small, and Gaia stands behind her, looking puzzled. He doesn't know how much time she's been there, but he hopes she can convince Clarke to stay. Bellamy doesn't want her in another dangerous situation after all the things she's been through.

“It has to be someone who can learn the marks and knows how to draw.”

Murphy snorts. “Yeah, Bellamy can’t draw for shit.”

“How did you know Clarke is good at it?” Gaia asks, but even before Hope answers, he knows what her answer is going to be.

“Octavia told me everything she knew about everyone in this room,” she offers.

“She is not going,” Bellamy insists, mad that no one is batting an eye at it. That everyone is already prepared for it, like it's something expected of her. He absolutely loathes it. “You are asking us to let her go into the unknown, alone and without—”

“I didn’t say she has to go alone,” Hope says, frowning. “She can choose a partner to go with her, but that can complicate things, too.”

“How?”

Hope shrugs as much as she can when she’s restrained. “When more than one person enters the anomaly, there’s no guarantee they’ll stay together. They could be thrown away to different worlds or times. I was supposed to come here with Octavia the last time and I ended up on another world before coming here.” She looks down at her clothes and wrinkles her nose. “That's where the clothes come from.” She shakes her head a little, as if to clear her head. She looks at Clarke, gentle. “You need to make sure you’re attached to the person that goes with you and that there isn’t a part of any of you who wants to be separated. It has to be a connection strong enough to hold you together. The marks can help with that, and I can find something else that can be of help, but—it could fail anyway.”

“And when they return they have to stay with all that stuff on their faces?” Murphy asks. He scowls when everyone looks at him. “What? We were all thinking about it. Look, guys, it looks fine on Diyoza’s kid, but I’m not sure if I want to look at Bellamy’s face and see all that stuff on him. It's enough with the beard. I can’t even see his face.”

He ignores the comment, but at least everyone knows by now that he's going to be the one going with Clarke.

“The marks disappear in a couple of weeks if he’s in the world he belongs to. If he isn’t, everyone who has traveled through the Anomaly can identify him; that’s how we found someone to help us the first time and this is the easiest way to find Octavia,” Hope answers, frowning at him. “She told me you were weird but not this weird.”

Raven snorts, smirking at him.

“So… she needs to go,” Madi whispers, staring blankly in their direction before nodding and walking away.

He can feel the tension in Clarke's body, her urge to go after the girl she considers her daughter. She shares a look with Gaia, but he can see that she’s still hesitating.

“Go,” he says, soft, nodding in the direction of the door. “We won't decide anything until you come back.”

She nods, relieved and gives him a little smile before getting out of the cabin. He watches her go before turning his attention to Gabriel and whispering, “Can I talk to you for a second?”

The older man frowns, but nods at Bellamy and lets him drag him to the corner of the room.

“I'm pretty sure you're not just going to tell me you're not going,” he remarks knowingly.

“I want you to find a way to keep Clarke in Sanctum. Safe and away from any dangers.”

Gabriel's face goes serious. “Bellamy—”

“Just—” He swallows hard. “Please? You said it before, she needs time to recover from Josephine and— what happened to her mother it's not going to be easy for her. She should be spending time with her family. With Madi.”

Gabriel is looking at him like he's an idiot. After a moment, he says, “I'm not doing that.”

“She needs to be safe,” Bellamy hisses, trying to sound threatening, but he thinks it doesn’t work when the man he’s talking to saw him in a moment of vulnerability.

“And with her family. You just said it. You're right, she's not okay, but she needs something to do right now, she wants to help you bring your sister back and she's the best for the job.” When Bellamy tries to talk again, Gabriel shakes his head and puts his hand on his own hips. “Look, if she left and went to the Anomaly to find your sister on her own, it would kill you—not knowing if it's safe for her out there or not, or if she’s even going to come back. I can’t believe I have to tell you that it's the same for her. You should know by now.”

Bellamy doesn't want to tell him how wrong he is, because he's saying the truth. Bellamy loves Clarke with everything he has, and even though he knows it’s not the same for her, he knows she'll be worried if he left without back up. Worse yet, without her. She would torture herself thinking that maybe he doesn't trust her and hasn’t really forgiven her for what happened before they left Earth, even if the truth is that he doesn’t want anything bad happening to her. She would never be able to see it that way.

“I know you're worried about her, but there's no one else in this moon who knows her better than you," he continues. "She needs you, Bellamy. Even if all she does is stand by your side— that's going to be enough for her.” A weak smile dances on his lips, but it has something behind it, a little secret; not bad, just—like he knows something that Bellamy doesn't. Or like he's remembering something cherished. Bellamy is bad at reading other people. “Besides, I think it's going to be easier for the two of you to find each other in that multiverse Hope is talking about.”

Bellamy frowns. “Why?”

The look Gabriel gives him is intense but he doesn't understand what he's thinking until he says, “You are always finding each other.” He looks to the others in the room before returning his gaze in Bellamy's direction. “At least that's what Octavia told me. If someone has the chance to do this, I think you do. Besides, there's no one in this room more connected to Clarke than you. You have a special connection and you could use it to your advantage.”

“I thought you'd want to go. This is the work of your life.”

“Would you trust me with her life if I did?”

“No, I wouldn't,” Bellamy answers, immediately. And then, even though Gabriel is looking at him with amusement, he adds guiltily, “But that's not your fault.” He looks to everyone in the room. From Raven, to Echo, to Murphy and Emori, and then back to him—the man who helped him save Clarke from Josephine. “I don't think I'd trust anyone with her safety after everything that happened.”

He nods. “Even if I wanted to, the mission right now is to save Octavia. There's no guarantee I'll exist at the same time she does wherever she is. We come from another times. But you're her brother, and you and Clarke will be enough to bring her back, hopefully.” 

Bellamy nods a little, swallowing hard. He looks around the room one last time before leaving, deciding to wait for Clarke outside.

* * *

She finds him thirty minutes later, sitting on the grass outside the shelter.

“I could ask Hope for her help to take me there,” he tells her when he hears the sound of her footsteps behind him. “You don't have to do this.”

“You don't want me to come with you?”

He sighs when she sits beside him, and then holds her gaze for a long moment. “You know that's not it. We don't know if we can trust what she's saying in the first place,” he says. “I mean, she stabbed Octavia, for fuck's sake. We don't know if death is waiting for us there, or what we are going to be facing there the moment we enter.”

“But you're going anyway.” It's not a question. 

His shoulders slump. He knows he can't ask her to stay because something is dangerous when he's not even hearing his own advice. “Yeah.” He shrugs, looks down at the grass and tugs at it, doesn't know what to do with his hands. “She's my sister.” 

She sighs. “I don't know how many times I have to say it for you to understand, but—you're part of my family, Bellamy. I won't let you do this alone. Hope is saying that I have to go, so I'm going to help you.”

“Clarke—”

“No, listen to me. You’re not going there without me. You saved me, and you said—” Her voice becomes a whisper, and she sounds so small for a second that he has to look at her. “You said you couldn’t lose me. Was that a lie?”

There’s something heavy in his stomach at the fear he hears in her words, as if she's waiting for him to say that it was just something he said when he wasn't thinking clearly, even when it's one of the only things he's sure of.

It takes him a few seconds to find his voice. “Of course not. That’s exactly the reason I don’t want you to come with me.”

She nods, accepting his answer, but there's something in her eyes that looks a lot like relief, and he takes note of it to make sure he tells her every time he has the chance. Clarke deserves to know how important she really is all the time.

“Well, that goes both ways, okay? I can’t lose you either, so I’m going to go with you and we’ll have each other’s backs. If I can make this easier for all of us, I will.” She nudges him with her elbow. “I don't want anything happening to you, okay? You—” She exhales. “I need you to be safe and I'm going to make sure that happens.”

Her words take his breath away and he looks at her in wonder, doesn't know what to say for a second. 

He hesitates, but he needs to know. “What about Madi?”

“She told me I should do this, and that I shouldn't worry about her.” He snorts at that and she offers him a smile. “I know, right? She doesn't understand that I'll be worrying about her anyway. But you get it.”

“Yeah,” he says, thinking about Octavia and the way he raised her. The way he's doing this for her. He knows the feeling, and he appreciates that Clarke wants to go with him anyway, even when she shouldn't.

She stands and then offers him her hand to do the same. She tilts her head towards the place where everyone is. ”Come on, we have plans to make.”

They walk shoulder to shoulder until they reach the place and when they enter, they both notice that Gabriel and Hope are the only people in the room. She's eating, free at last and with her hair falling over her shoulders. She's also taken off all strange clothing she had on top of her before they left, and instead of her grounder attire she has comfortable clothes on. Gabriel is watching her closely with curiosity as if he's never seen something so fascinating.

“Where is everyone else?” Clarke asks, frowning.

“Most of them said that this was your problem,” Gabriel replies without looking in their direction. “They didn't want to get in the way of it. Not when Hope told them it would be better if only you knew everything you needed to know and no one was here to interrupt her explanations.”

Bellamy can feel the way it relaxes Clarke, knowing that none of them will be coming back soon. His heart aches for her, because she seems to feel safer with two strangers than with those she's saved time and time again.

“And what do I need to learn to find Octavia? How long will it take?”

Hope brightens. “As soon as you are confident about the way you draw the patterns in the drawing, you can go. Well—that and the marks.”

“We are going together,” Bellamy announces.

“That helps a lot, actually,” Hope says to him. “That way Clarke can learn the drawings and you can learn the marks you will need. It will be faster.”

“What else do we need to know?”

“Octavia and my mom have been trying to keep me safe all my life and it hasn't been an easy task. Every time we had to go through the Anomaly, it took something from us and then gave us something else. Every single time it was different, and I don't think it makes sense for me to protect you from that, but—I guess that's something you should know, at least.”

“How so?” Clarke asks, worried. “What kind of thing would it take from us?”

“I'm talking about—” Hope huffs, frustrated. "I don't know. It could take one of your memories and then gift you with one of your dreams coming true or… maybe some secret. I already told you, I don't know what it's going to take from you, everyone is different. This is your first time traveling and if you don't stay there more than ten years you just have to go through this when you enter and when you exit.”

“Ten years?” Clarke asks, incredulously. “How can you say that so... calmly? Is it going to take that long?”

“I don't think so. This is—you're looking for someone, not lost and looking for a place to stay.”

“Is the Anomaly going to take something from them, like a limb or an eye?” Gabriel asks, more curious than afraid, but—well, he's not going.

Hope is already shaking her head before he ends the sentence. “It's never physical, even though the Anomaly can always heal you.” She looks at Bellamy at that. “That's why I know that Octavia is okay.”

He sighs in relief. He'd been imagining his sister bleeding out on some unknown place, alone. It’s good to know that’s not happening.

And then something else occurs to him. “Wait. You said that the Anomaly can heal people. Could it help Clarke after what happened with Josephine?”

“Yeah, of course,” she replies without hesitation, and then she looks at Clarke, frowning. "But you really have to learn the drawings before going inside.” At Clarke's nod, she smiles a little. “Oh, and you can't stay too long in one place, or things can get—” She hesitates. “It's weird, but it starts getting kind of confusing for you. Your memories mix together, and it's harder to know what's yours and what belongs to the person you are on that world.”

She looks up, expectant for their answer, but they don't really have one. Bellamy frowns and then shares a look with Clarke, who looks as confused as he feels, but Gabriel is the one who asks, “What do you mean by that?”

Hope blinks, surprised. “Oh! I didn't tell you. Sorry, it’s a lot of stuff you need to know in a small amount of time.” She leaves her food at her side. “When you travel to another world, there's already a version of yourself there. That's where you go when you cross the Anomaly. Your body can't exist twice when you're already there, because, you know, physics—” she says, rolling her eyes, and when she sees that they don't get it, she adds, “It's some stupid rule where two bodies who share the same characteristics can't exist in the same place or something, I'm not sure how to explain it.” She scowls. "I think my mom can say it better than me, but the point is that your mind goes to the body that's already there. I never paid a lot of attention to the science behind it. I just know that you have their memories and if you aren't staying there for long, you have to go through their day as if nothing happened and doing the same things they needed to do.”

It's too much knowledge, but he thinks he understands everything, even if most of it sounds impossible. He gets why Murphy was so disbelieving of it all.

“I can guide you there, but I can't go with you,” she confesses.

“Her connection to the Anomaly is gone,” Gabriel explains before they can ask. “She says that now she knows for sure that whoever wanted Octavia to die doesn't exist anymore, she doesn't think that she can go back there. You're on your own.”

”I’ll give you a list to all the worlds she’s been in,” she assures Bellamy. “I just hope it's easy to find her.”

“And what if it isn't?”

She just shrugs. “You’ll just have to keep looking.”

“And what are they going to do, if Bellamy is dead in one of those worlds, or Clarke?” Gabriel questions. “Or what if they end up in different worlds, trapped there without a way out because they only have half the knowledge they need about how to travel between worlds?” When he realizes that everyone is looking at him, he raises an eyebrow. “I don't think there's a universe where you aren't connected,” he tells him and Clarke, “but I don't know if I'd be as certain that you won't be separated when you cross the door. I think you should be prepared.”

Hope dismisses his concern with a movement of her hand. “I'll give Clarke a way to fix it if it happens.”

“Why not both of us?” Bellamy asks.

“Murphy already said that you don't know how to draw. I don't think you can learn to do it as fast as I need you to.” Her face brightens, just like it's done every time she wants to share something new. “That reminds me that you have to choose a wake up word. It has to be different for each of you.”

“A what?”

“It's—when you enter the Anomaly and find yourself in another body, you have to hear certain word so you wake up there. It has to be something simple, nothing complicated.” She shrugs. “One word.”

He shares a glance with Clarke and immediately knows which word she's going to choose. She smiles a little and he can tell that she knows his too.

“Done,” he says, returning his gaze to Hope.

“Oh, uh—” She blinks in surprise. “I guess Octavia was right,” she mutters, but no one asks what she means by that because she immediately goes back to business and starts explaining something about the drawings to Clarke.

* * *

Bellamy is sure he’s never been as tired as he is when he goes to his room three nights later.

It’s been exhausting, trying to keep everyone safe in Sanctum with all the things going on his head, and he just wants a good night’s sleep when he realizes that there’s light coming from under Clarke’s door. He sighs, before knocking on her door. When she doesn't answer, he opens it, slow and quiet just in case she's asleep and just forgot to turn off the light. 

What he sees makes him ache. She's sitting in front of her desk, her face in her hands and she looks up at him when she hears him enter. It brings another image from years ago on another planet; they were preparing for the end of the world then and now it feels slightly similar, going into the unknown.

She’s been even more stressed than he is, trying to share the burden of the leadership in Sanctum with him and Gabriel and spending the rest of her time trying to copy the drawing until she can do it from memory alone. He’s tried to tell her to rest and take a break more times than he can count, and Gabriel told her that she shouldn’t be stressing as much, but she doesn’t listen.

“Clarke,” he breathes. “You should get some rest.”

“I can’t,” she says, and he can hear that she’s frustrated, can see the desperation in her eyes before she looks back at the drawings on the table. “I have to—”

“You can continue with that tomorrow.”

She presses her lips together. “I’m stronger than everyone thinks.”

He frowns. “Of course you are,” he agrees without hesitation, because that’s an undeniable fact. And then understanding dawns on him. “Is that what this is about? What everyone thinks about you?”

“Everyone looks at me like I’m about to break, like they think I’m going to get you killed.” She bites her lip. “I don’t want them to be right.”

“Clarke—”

“I know I’m not at my best, but you have to know that I would never—” She swallows, drops her eyes to the floor. Her voice is small when she says. “I’m doing the best I can and—” 

He closes the distance between them, kneeling without thinking. His leg protests, but it’s nothing as painful as the despair in Clarke's gaze.

“You don’t have to prove anything to anyone. Not even me.” He licks his lips. “If I had to choose someone to go with me, I still would’ve picked you. You’re the one I trust the most.”

Her eyes are full of tears when she asks, “Even after everything that happened?”

His answer comes immediately. “Yes.” 

She takes a deep, shuddering breath, and he knows his words are helping; the defeat on her expression leaves her and she wipes away her tears, squaring her shoulders as if preparing herself for a fight. But there’s something there that he can’t understand, something she isn’t saying.

“There’s something else bothering you, isn’t it?” 

She gives him a small, watery smile. “You can still see through me, huh?”

He tries to return the gesture, but all he can manage is a brief tilt of his lips that disappears as fast as it comes. Clarke shouldn’t be worrying about crossing a door to an unknown place when she’s just lost her mother and was body-snatched a few days ago.

“Tell me,” he almost begs in a whisper, looking up at her.

“I’m scared,” she admits, looking away, as if her confession could make her weaker in his eyes. But she’s as strong as she has always been. His expression must betray his thoughts because she exhales slowly when she returns her gaze to him and puts her hands on top of his where they rest on her knees. “Every time I close my eyes, I see—sometimes I can even _feel_ Josephine’s memories as if they were my own.” Tears cling to her lashes when she looks at him. “I asked Gabriel and he said it’s impossible for her to return, but I just—I feel like she _could_. I’m scared of going to sleep. Madi has been staying with Gaia because I didn’t want her to realize how bad this is. I just—” She closes her eyes. “I hate that I’m still letting her control my life. She’s still here, somehow.”

“That doesn’t make you weak, Clarke,” he assures, rubbing small circles on her wrists. He thinks about it for a second and then rises to his feet. Clarke looks at him with scared, uncertain eyes. He tugs at her hand, “Follow me.”

She looks at the table, at the work she’s been doing. “Bellamy, I can’t. I have to—”

“Please. If you can’t sleep tonight, I’ll let you do whatever you want, okay? If it doesn't work, we can talk until someone comes looking for us. But I’m not leaving you alone.”

“I'm not sure I should—”

“Please.”

She hesitates for another second and then she nods, still trusting him with everything she has. He walks her out into the hallway, to the door in front of her room. He asked for this room specifically because he didn’t want to be away from her anymore. Their beds are of the same size but he doesn’t think she’d appreciate sleeping close to the mess of papers on her desk.

She’s already in her pajamas, sweatpants and a shirt that looks a little big on her, but he takes his clothes and gets ready in the small bathroom attached to his bedroom. When he returns, she’s sitting on the bed, uncertain.

“If you wake up—if there are nightmares waiting for you, I’ll be here,” he tells her, and it sounds like a promise.

She gets under the covers and then, when he sits on the chair on the corner of the room, she shakes her head and says, “Not like this.”

“Like what?”

She removes the sheets and tilts her jaw to the unoccupied side of the bed. His heart stops and then starts beating double time. He swallows hard, and then slides under the covers without asking anything else, trying to get as comfortable as he can. 

He wants to tell her how much he loves her, but he knows he shouldn’t. Not right now, anyway. She deserves him at his best, and part of him knows that she’s not going to believe him if he tells her how he feels about her now, just after losing his sister. Everyone knows that he broke up with Echo that day, and he doesn’t want her to think that he doesn’t know what he wants or that he’s confused. He wants her to believe him the moment the words are out of his mouth.

Just when he thinks she’s fallen asleep, she asks in a small whisper, “Can you hold me?”

He opens his arms to her, and she presses near with a little sigh. They both relax immediately and he closes his eyes, enjoying having her so close.

He kisses her temple. “Do you remember how much of a mess I was a few days ago? And the way you calmed me down?” She nods against his chest. “I’m here for you too, Clarke. Always. No matter when you need me, I’m going to be there. When the weight is too much for you to bear, I’ll bear it with you, just like you’ve done with me. Because that’s what we’ve always done for each other.”

“Together,” she murmurs against his shirt. She sounds half-asleep, but he knows that she means it.

He exhales shakily and closes his eyes. “Together,” he repeats. “Good night, Clarke.”

“Bellamy,” Madi calls, bursting through the door without calling first, startling him out of his dream. “Clarke is not—” She trails off when she notices that he’s not alone and her eyes widen when she recognizes immediately the blonde hair on the pillow next to him. “Oh.”

Clarke moves a little in her sleep, but presses closer to him, and he smiles a little at her before looking at her daughter. “She couldn’t sleep and I didn’t want to leave her alone. Do you need anything?”

“No,” she replies, soft. “Just let her rest. And thank you,” she adds. “I knew you’d keep her safe.”

He swallows the lump in his throat and nods. He doesn’t get out of bed until she wakes up.

* * *

It doesn’t take more than a week for Hope to teach them what they need to know about traveling between worlds and the Anomaly. Once Clarke starts sleeping better, it doesn’t take her that long to learn how to draw from memory what they need to make every time they want to open the door to another world.

“Before you leave, there’s something else you need,” Hope tells them after they’ve said their goodbyes and they are about to leave from Gabriel’s hut. Her hair has been on a tighter braid since the moment she could get her hands on it, and she gestures to the little black stones in her ears easily. “This is the thing I was telling Clarke you need, so you don’t get lost. They are made with obsidian; a lot of people believed in other worlds that this could protect them from evil, but the truth is that this can hide you from unwanted travelers, and—” Her mouth twitches. “Well, this can also protect you. It could be a pearl, but anything that’s a circle could work. It means eternity, a never ending line that lets you travel without consequences. This also shields your mind, except for—well, the trials before and after you enter the Anomaly are unavoidable. It’s like paying your entry. I’m pretty sure Gabriel has told you about the whole darkest-fear and deepest-desire thing.” When they both nod, she smiles, reassuring. “You don’t have to worry about it, you won’t see them. This helps with that, too.”

“So—that’s it?” Bellamy asks, gesturing to her ears. “Do we have to take those things with us?”

Hope shakes her head. “Gabriel and I made these for you,” she says, opening her fists in front of her and showing them two of those stones in form of some kind of fang or… tears, maybe. He has no idea what it is. A small thread hangs from one end on both of them, and it looks like a necklace, but homemade.

“You said it had to be a circle,” Clarke says, hesitant, taking one of them and looking at it closely.

Hope just shrugs. “I know, but this is like—a puzzle. When you put them together this is what you need,” she says, taking the stone from Clarke’s hands again and attaching it to the one she still has in her hands, forming a circle. “This is going to help you. You have to tangle it on your wrist and put them together like this when you’re about to leave a world. This will protect you from harm, and it’s like—a shield around you. Hopefully this is going to help you to remain in the same place.” She smiles, walks backwards a few steps. “Well, I think that’s all you need to know. Good luck.”

They both nod and walk in silence towards the forest, until they reach the place where the Anomaly is waiting for them and stop. 

Bellamy licks his lips and looks at Clarke, _really_ looks at her and realizes how scared he is to make this trip. How scared he is of losing everything he has, of going back to those six years of hell thinking that Clarke was dead and that he’d lost her forever.

He takes her hand and she exhales, squeezing his fingers a little. When he looks at her, she already has her gaze on him and he notices that she’s scared, too.

“Last chance to go back,” he murmurs, but he already knows that she won’t take it. 

She half-smiles, gives his hand another squeeze before looking back in the direction of the green storm waiting for them. “We are going to save your sister.”

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and when he opens them again he feels stronger, somehow. She has that effect on him.

They walk hand in hand until the anomaly swallows them whole. 

* * *

The first thing he notices when they are inside is the blinding, endless light. They’re surrounded by green, but it’s nothing like the forest from before, where they could see all the lights reflected in the trees and the ground. He doesn't see anything here and he wonders how the hell Diyoza could give birth in a place like this.

It's harder to breathe too, and he feels like he weighs thousand times more than he really does; every step they take feels like an eternity and he wonders if this is normal or if they shouldn't have trusted Diyoza's child.

What if his sister is dead and now he's condemned Clarke to the same fate?

That's when the storm starts and Clarke’s hand slips away from his. The soft breeze becomes something stronger and takes her away from him. The panic that claws at his chest is strong, and he feels like he can’t breathe for an entirely different reason than the atmosphere.

“Clarke!” he shouts, desperate, trying to find her in the place they’re in, but there’s wind hitting him from every direction and he can’t see, can’t hear anything but the storm and the punishing wind.

And then, in the middle of the chaos, there’s a small voice he’d recognize everywhere.

“Bellamy!”

His heart is in his throat and it’s not easy to get his voice working to answer.

“Clarke!” he screams back. “Where are you? I can’t see you!”

“Bellamy!” There’s something desperate in her voice this time and he feels like he’s going out of his mind. This is the reason he didn’t want her to come with him. It’s his worst nightmare come true. He wanted her to be safe with Madi in Sanctum, away from any immediate danger.

“Bellamy! Help me!”

He doesn’t know where to go, doesn’t know what to do. And then, he hears a piercing scream that shakes him to the core, and he calls her name again, his heart beating wildly inside his chest. It feels like she’s everywhere, the wind carrying her voice from every direction, but he doesn’t think he’s going to forget that scream, it keeps echoing in his ears—

All he wants to do is find her, take her back to Sanctum and come back to find Octavia by himself.

Instead, something hits him and he falls to the ground without any sign of her. 

He still has the necklace in his grip.

* * *

Bellamy wakes up with a start, covered in sweat and breathing hard. He doesn’t know where he is, or what the fuck happened.

He doesn’t know where Clarke is, doesn’t know what to do now, or how to get back two of the most important people in his life.

He startles when someone touches his arm.

“Bellamy?”

He stops breathing when her lips touch the spot on his shoulder he always thought was hers. Every time they hug, she’s always burying her head in the crook of his neck, her mouth always finding that spot. He'd recognize that touch anywhere; he doesn't know why he couldn't tell it was her before she said her name.

The fog of his nightmare is still in the forefront of his mind, and he can’t shake it.

“Are you okay?”

When he turns to look at her, the sight that greets him takes his breath away. She looks half asleep and worried, but that's not what amazes him the most. She holds a sheet to her chest while she frowns and she looks so beautiful like that—a shirt too big to be hers exposing one of her shoulders, by his side on his bed. He can't resist it; he tilts his body to hers and cups her jaw, his lips kissing her eagerly. She gasps, but kisses him back just as hard, her fingers tangling into his curls, pulling him on top of her while they kiss and she holds him to her. There’s a hunger, a desperation in their kisses, and even though he feels like this isn’t their first (there are too many memories of it on his mind), some part of him feels like it is. Memories start flooding his brain, and he feels dizzy and lost, doesn't know what's real and what is nothing more than a dream.

All the things from before sound like a nightmare, but this life is good, so he says, “Yeah,” and goes back to bed, pulling Clarke close to his chest, feels the press of skin against skin and falls asleep. 

He wakes up when she presses a kiss to his chest, leaving a trail of heat on one of his shoulders, the curve of his neck and his cheek with her fingers. By the time she reaches his mouth, he's already awake and when she replaces her hand with her mouth he returns her kiss, soft and lazy.

“Morning,” she says against his lips.

“'Morning, princess.” He shifts until he's comfortable on his back on the bed. He moved in his sleep until he was on his side, and he’s never enjoyed lying like that. He loves having her weight on top of him, one of her legs entwined with his, her head on his chest while she traces a scar on one of his arms. He kisses her forehead, begs for that nightmare to go away. “We should stay in bed all day.”

“We can't,” she replies. “We have to check on Madi and see if Raven needs anything today. Help Monty with the algae and—”

He chuckles. “You've made your point, princess. We're still very busy people. I just wish we could have more time to ourselves.”

“We will. Soon.”

She gets out of bed, and then changes into her own clothes before looking back at him, raising an eyebrow. “Are you coming or what?”

He still feels a little shaky, and doubts that she won’t notice if he gets up. “You go ahead,” he says. He feels even more dazed than when he woke up in the middle of the night.

She has that frown on her face that tells him that she knows he's not okay, but doesn't push it, just nods before leaving.

Bellamy waits twenty minutes on the bed, looking at the ceiling for a while before deciding to just get out of bed and walking aimlessly for the hallways of the Ring. He doesn't know why everything feels so out of place.

He remembers finding a woman begging for them to save her child and then taking her with them to the ring, Clarke and him basically adopting her at first sight when she just said that her name was Madi; he remembers going to space, almost losing Clarke.

Something feels off, though.

He can’t stop thinking about that fucking dream, that nightmare full of his worst fears. Losing Clarke for six years, not knowing that she was alive and being consumed by guilt, and the intense pain of grief that was his most loyal companion while on the Ring.

Bellamy doesn’t realize that his feet are taking him to his window. The one he’d reclaimed in his nightmare as his; the one he used to torture himself just to watch the burning Earth knowing that he’d left the woman he loved to die.

He notices her presence the moment she walks into the hallway; his body so attuned to her that he knows the pattern of her steps, the sound of her feet touching the floor even better than he knows himself. He lets out a breath when her hands slide around his waist and her fingers entwine on his stomach from behind.

She kisses between his shoulder blades. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

She snorts a little, letting go of him so she can stand in front of him. “You’re a bad liar when it comes to me, remember?”

The corner of his mouth twitches a little. “It was just some… stupid dream.”

“Another nightmare?” she asks, worriedly.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it.”

“It’s too late for that. That’s what we do for each other.” 

It echoes something else in his mind, makes a headache appear with an intensity he wasn’t prepared for.

_When the weight is too much for you to bear, I’ll bear it with you, just like you’ve done with me. Because that’s what we’ve always done for each other._

He makes a sound low in his throat, painful memories that keep coming and going, the pain disrupting the peaceful and happy scenario he’s in. But it does the work: it wakes him up.

“No,” he murmurs. In denial or in response to her words, he’s not sure. This isn’t the Clarke he knows, is the one he longed for when he lost her. There are tears in his eyes again because, fuck, he was a goddamn fool for believing this was real. “This isn’t—this is not mine.”,

Fuck, this is everything he wished for ever since he closed the door of that damn rocket and took her chance to come with him to the Ark, to finally tell her how he felt. This is just—a dream.

“What?” she asks.

He looks down at the window and barely contains the impulse to cry. The pain he felt all those years thinking that he wouldn’t see her again can’t be faked, but the happiness he felt when he woke up with her wearing his clothes is already slipping through his fingers.

That kind of happiness wouldn’t go away just for a nightmare and that just proves that this is reality is the one that’s a dream.

“You’re not real,” he says out loud. “This is—I’ve had a lot of dreams about this since the moment I left Earth the first time. None of this is real.”

She shakes her head, confused. “Of course this is real, Bellamy. We are here, together. We are safe.”

The soothing melody of her voice it’s almost enough to make him surrender to her and stay in this place, even though he knows it’s just a lie, but—

Clarke —his Clarke, the one who came with him to save his sister— is still out there, somewhere. He’s not going to leave her alone to face all those other worlds.

He realizes that the weight on his chest isn’t just because he’s here and has everything he’s ever wanted. It’s not just the painful reminder of his reality; when he reaches to touch the place under his chest that’s burning, he feels the necklace Hope gave him before he left.

He touches this Clarke’s cheek, smiles a little. “I’m sorry we couldn’t have this,” he whispers, the longing in his voice almost choking him. “In another world, maybe we did. I’m sorry we didn’t.”

Bellamy drops a kiss to her forehead, closes his eyes for a second and breathes her in. 

He closes a fist around the black stone and lets the darkness wrap around him and take him away.


	2. Morning after

“And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.”

—Kiersten White, The Chaos of Stars.

The first thing Clarke notices when she wakes up is how soft the sheets feel against her skin. The bed is more comfortable than usual, and even if they are in the middle of winter and she's always cold when it's early, this time she enjoys the warmth that surrounds her with a sigh.

She’s always grumpy first thing in the morning, but this time is different. She feels incredibly satisfied and sore between her legs, and there’s an arm wrapped around her waist. A smile dances on her lips while she stretches and a certain someone shifts behind her, pulling her close to his body and sighing against the bare skin of her shoulder.

Dim light enters through the windows and she groans, shifting and making the body behind her hold her tighter, burying his nose in her hair.

She has to hide her grin against the pillow.

“Stop moving, princess,” Bellamy murmurs, pressing a kiss to her neck. His voice is rough with sleep and his words bring back memories of him using the nickname in entirely different situations. “We don’t have to work today and I want to spend all day in bed.”

“Because that’s an attainable goal,” she murmurs, rolling her eyes, but she’s sure he can hear the smile in her voice. “We have to eat, too, Bellamy.”

Clarke tries to get out of bed, but he doesn’t let her, just keeps holding her to his chest. She turns in his arms to look at him.

“Where are you going?” he mumbles, mostly asleep and with half-lidded eyes. His hair is more of a mess than usual, mostly thanks to her, and the thought makes her smile and want a repeat from last night’s activities.

Another thought crosses her mind and she groans again, knowing that she _has_ to get up. “I was supposed to go to Emori’s apartment so Raven could tell us all about her trip with Shaw,” she explains, even if all she wants to do today is to stay in their home and be with him.

“Don't go,” he complains. “You can stay with your new boyfriend in bed all day.”

She rolls her eyes, but his use of the word boyfriend brings a brighter smile to her face. “Think you can convince me to stay?”

His eyes are heated when he smirks, but he’s still mostly asleep and it’s adorable instead of hot. He shifts closer. “What do you want me to do?” he asks against her lips.

She grins and kisses him, just enjoying the feeling of his mouth moving against hers for a while. It feels so good, after loving him for so long, to finally have him. His morning breath doesn’t matter to her after years of waiting and she guesses it’s the same for him.

“Make me breakfast so we can burn those calories really fast while I cancel my plans,” she answers after making out for a few minutes.

He kisses her again, chaste and sweet. “Fine.”

This time he looks more awake, at least, and he gets up in just his boxers, getting out of his bedroom and presumably going to their kitchen. Clarke does the same, but she puts on the first shirt she finds before leaving the room, looking for her purse. It's large enough to cover the boxers she took from him before falling asleep, and she loves how comfortable and safe a piece of fabric makes her feel just because it belongs to him.

She remembers throwing her bag away when they entered their apartment, too busy to pay attention to anything else while they were kissing. She finds it on the floor under her jacket after a few minutes, but Bellamy comes to her before she can open it, and kisses her again, as if he can’t resist doing it now that he can. She lets herself get swept away into the kiss, loving the way his arms feel around her, his hair between her fingers, the unhurried rhythm of lips against lips.

“I really need to call Emori,” she says, regretfully pulling away, a little breathless.

“’S okay,” he smiles, soft and still a little sleepy, with a lopsided smile. “I just wanted to do that.”

Clarke smiles back and then pushes him away, gently. “Go and make breakfast.”

“Yeah, yeah.” His smile becomes a smirk. “Now I finally know that you _really_ love to boss me around, princess.”

She laughs a little at the reminder of some of the things she said the night before, and then follows him, sitting on a chair by the kitchen counter with her back to him so she doesn't get distracted. Clarke takes her phone from her purse, and calls Emori; she answers after the first ring, almost as if waiting for her call.

“Please tell me you’re not cancelling our plans because you’re hangover or you got laid. I’m going to discover the answer to that when I see if Bellamy is grumpier than normal.”

She hesitates for a second before saying, “I don’t think he’ll be grumpier than normal.”

There’s silence on the other side of the call for a few seconds before the other woman replies.

“Please tell me that means what I think it means.”

“I think that depends on what you’re thinking,” Clarke teases, biting her lip.

“Come on, Clarke,” she huffs, impatiently. “Are you with him now or not?”

“Yeah.”

“Fucking finally,” she says, sounding so victorious that Clarke lets out a little laugh. “Well? What happened? Please tell me you got laid. I've been waiting for that to happen since you realized you were in love with him right before you two decided that being roommates was a good idea.”

She feels him coming behind her, wrapping his arms around her middle and nuzzling his face in the crook of her neck. She feels so happy she might burst. “Yeah, I got laid.”

Bellamy snorts against her skin, and presses a kiss there, making her shiver. When he returns to the stove, she misses the heat of him, and she decides that she's already tried to resist him for a long time and it didn't work, so she turns around and watches him without fear of getting caught this time. All the skin he has on display is making it hard to concentrate, and the way his muscles move under his skin is not helping at all; she wants to go and put her hands on him, now that she knows she can.

He turns to say something but when he notices that she’s already looking at him, he just raises an eyebrow and smirks, as if knowing what she's thinking.

“I'm glad you put your head out of your ass and made a move, then,” Emori says, but Clarke doesn’t answer, she just stays frozen with wide eyes. Bellamy frowns at her expression and that's the last thing she notices before everything goes black.

* * *

She wakes up with a pounding headache in the middle of some room she doesn't recognize at first. Her legs are bare and there's someone calling her name, soft and insistent; calloused fingers brush her hair as if to wake her up.

When she opens her eyes she finds Bellamy looking down at her, worried and a little scared. His face melts into relief when their gazes meet, but that's not the strangest thing she notices at first sight. His hair is shorter now that when they entered the Anomaly and he doesn’t have a beard anymore; he looks younger and her hand twitches at her side with the desire to reach out and press her palm against his cheek, knowing she’s just going to find smooth skin. The thought is enough to shock her in its intensity, the words getting stuck in her throat. Her head is in his lap, she realizes, and the rest of her body is in a very comfortable couch.

His fingers run down her jawline until he's cupping the back of her head and he swears, low, and rubs his face with his other hand. “Jesus, Clarke. You scared the hell out of me. Are you okay?”

She blinks repeatedly, but she's still disoriented and doesn't know how to answer. There are images she doesn't recognize in her mind, coming and going too quickly for her to grasp its meaning. It's like seeing one of those old movies she watched with her dad and Wells on the Ark, but in this case there are just brief flashes of all the scenes, making everything confusing and blurry. There are feelings and memories that are not really hers too, and it feels like she's invading this Clarke's privacy, stealing glimpses of her life.

It's nothing like sharing her mind with Josephine. She had access to the things she needed then, but this is too much. It's overwhelming.

Last night's memories are too fresh in her mind, though. There's nothing confusing or blurry about what happened in the bed she woke in and it makes her blush, wishing she could've chosen another moment to come to this world. She tries to close her eyes to block the images but they are too strong and awaited for this world’s Clarke; it's basically impossible. Not that she could blame her—or blame… herself? This is so confusing.

She feels like laughing and crying at the same time because here she is, on a rescue mission, envying some other version of herself because she has everything she wishes for, feeling like a thief for having the chance to see something she could only dream about.

“I am... I'm okay,” she chokes out, when she finally finds her voice.

Bellamy helps her sit and even though she knows it happened a lot the night before and even this morning, this time when he tries to kiss her in relief, she yelps and backs away.

His voice is hurt when he says, “Clarke?”

She closes her eyes again. Even though she understands that he’s not the same Bellamy she knows, she hates seeing him in pain. She loves him, _her version of him_ , and she's imagined what their first kiss would be like a thousand times, but she doesn't want it to be like this, even if this is the only chance she has left.

She hopes that if they don't find Octavia in this world, she doesn’t have to find herself in this situation again.

Clarke doesn't want to explain herself or reassure him (it would probably make him try to kiss her again), so she just says, _“Heart,”_ and watches helplessly as he falls unconscious in front of her.

She's glad they were already on the couch and she can catch his face in her hands, gently, and put his head on the back of the couch. It's then that she realizes the clothes they are both wearing and— _fuck_ , she's happy that they can be together on another world, but now she has the sudden urge to cry. She hates to see something that it's not hers but it's so close to what she wants that she could close her eyes and pretend it is.

Clarke stands and goes to his room, bringing back one of his bedsheets and moving him until he's lying on the couch, covering him with it so he doesn't get cold, and so she doesn’t have to see a lot of his skin. She swallows when she sees how peaceful he looks and decides to take a quick shower; it's going to be creepy if he wakes up only to find her looking at him.

Clarke wonders if her headache is because she fell and hit her head or if it's simply one of the consequences of traveling through worlds. Hope did say that the Anomaly always took and gave something if they used it, after all, but she also said it wouldn't be anything physical, so it can't be this... unless she forgot to mention it, or lied about it.

She enters the bathroom and takes off ~~her~~ (Bellamy's) clothes. It's bizarre to see all the soft skin she has here, so used to the scars given by a lifetime of war. She sees a thin line on her thigh, and the memory comes immediately to her, almost as if she had asked for it: she was playing with Wells when they were little and she fell; they made a mess trying to hide all the blood until she started crying and Wells' dad took her to the hospital.

It's a different kind of painful than what she feels on her chest when she notices all the hickeys Bellamy left on her skin the night before, remembers the sensation of certain things, like the way he kissed her, or whispered her name against her skin.

Clarke ends her shower when the thought crosses her mind, not wanting to face all of it anymore, sending all of it away—or trying as best as she can, at least. This doesn’t belong to her; this is not her life, or her Bellamy. They are on a mission and these are just memories of a stranger that has nothing to do with her.

She dresses with the clothes she took before entering the bathroom and goes to the living room just to find that he hasn't moved. Something catches her attention and she takes this Clarke’s phone, finding that she has a few messages.

**_Emori:_ ** _I’ll assume you aren't answering because Bellamy convinced you to go back to bed. We'll catch up with Raven on wednesday, don't forget!_

**_Emori:_ ** _Get laid as much as you can!_

It makes it hard for her to swallow, but she doesn't answer, just lets the screen go back to black and leaving the phone in the countertop.

She waits for her world's Bellamy to wake up while she sits on another couch. His face is relaxed, and he looks vulnerable like this, but not tired like he did when they were on Sanctum. They've been sharing the same bed for a week now and she's spent a lot of time watching him sleep, but it's different to see him without a beard. This reminds her of old, simpler times.

He scares her when he finally opens his eyes, gasping for air, and she rushes to his side immediately. The expression on his face is lost and confused, and it takes her a lot of time to get him to hear her voice, saying his name over and over again. He doesn’t react at first, moving around on the couch until the sheet falls away from his chest and he falls to the floor with his legs tangled on it.

“Bellamy, Bellamy,” she whispers, crouching by his side and cupping his face in her hands until his eyes finally focus on her. “Breathe, just—breathe, okay? I need you to breathe. Try to do it like me.”

It takes maybe a few seconds or minutes for him to regulate his breathing but it feels like it's been two hours by the time she's sure his heart is beating at a normal speed. It doesn’t take as long as it did to calm him down after he lost his sister but it’s scary nonetheless. She scoots a little closer to him and lets her head fall to his shoulder, trying to calm the accelerated rhythm of her heart. Bellamy threads his fingers through her hair and buries his face in the crook of her neck, and she can feel the dampness of his tears on her skin but she doesn’t say anything and neither does he. If this is what he needs, she's going to give it to him without question.

“What was that?” she asks after a couple of minutes, trying to make sense of it all. They were calm, when they entered the Anomaly, and she didn’t have that kind of reaction when she woke up.

Clarke tries to get out of his hold, but he’s still shaking and doesn’t want to let go of her. She just pulls back a little to meet his gaze instead, and his eyes roam all over her face, as if to absorb the details. His face is a little puzzled when he notices the length of her hair, longer than she's ever had it and one of his hands reaches to touch it, damp and curled against his fingers.

“It wasn’t like that for me when I woke up,” she murmurs, and that makes him look up at her.

“What was it, for you?”

She frowns. “Uh, I just woke up and—”

“No, I mean—before that. What happened?”

She shakes her head, trying to clear her thoughts. “You took my hand, we walked into the Anomaly and I was here.” Her frown deepens in worry when he looks away, letting go of her hair. “Bellamy, what happened to you?”

He clenches his jaw and closes his eyes. “Nothing you have to worry about.”

“Bellamy?” her voice is small, even a little scared. _What the hell could have happened to him to leave him so shaken?_

“I’ll tell you later, okay?” He disentangles himself from her and she feels cold all of a sudden, staying on the floor and looking up at him when he gets to his feet. “I’m not going to keep secrets from you. I just need a second to—clear my head. It’s too hard to think right now and I think I feel a headache coming.”

“Okay,” she nods, because she has one of those too. “Is there something I could help you with?”

“Let’s just—figure out where Octavia is, okay?”

Clarke nods again. “You could take a shower,” she offers, and looks away when Bellamy notices that he's half naked in front of her. There's a little blush on his cheeks when he reaches down to take the sheet from the floor, covering himself with it, but he nods, stuttering words she doesn't really understand until he finally stops, sighs and goes to his room for more clothes, and then to the bathroom to follow her suggestion.

He comes back a few minutes later. She's sitting by the kitchen counter and looks up at him when she hears his footsteps, having heard the door a few seconds before. Everything about him screams defeat right now and she doesn't know what to do with it, how to make it better.

“You remember our promise, right?” she asks, soft. He returns her gaze, broken and weakened. He seems even worse than he did before he took the shower, like the time alone just made him feel worse instead of better. If feels like he went to war and just came back, shoulders slumped and barely able to walk with the weight on his back. “We'll always be there for each other,” she tells him firmly. “If you need me to do something, _anything,_ I—”

Bellamy closes the distance between them, as if he'd just been waiting for the words. He wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her close, ducking his head so he can bury his nose in her hair. She holds him tighter when she feels the dampness he's leaving on her shoulder, and rubs his back when sobs shake his frame. She closes her eyes and feels his pain as her own, wanting to take it all away.

“Sorry, I just—I wasn’t expecting to see that,” he mumbles against her shoulder before pulling away a little so he can see her face. His eyes are read from crying and he wipes away his tears, swallowing hard. “Hope told us that her marks would protect us from all the hallucinations the Anomaly offers when it tries to lull people inside, but I think that's what I saw before waking up here—with you.” He takes a deep, shuddering breath and rubs his face. “God, it was awful. But now we can—we can continue,” he suggests, as if she could just pretend that he's okay and nothing happened. “We should go and look for Octavia.”

“You can take five minutes, Bellamy,” she tells him gently. “It's not—”

He shakes his head. “I don't want to spend more time inside the Anomaly than we need to,” he answers. “Just—please?”

She hesitates for a second, but he's right; she doesn't want to be here more than necessary either.

* * *

They've been on the road for twenty minutes when Bellamy speaks again. She's been giving him space until now, to order his thoughts and clear his head. Clarke didn't want to push him after seeing—whatever he saw inside the Anomaly.

“She didn't tell us about that.” She looks at him, questioningly. “Hope,” he clarifies. “She didn't tell us that we were going to pass out.”

Clarke shrugs. “It was a lot of information she needed to give us.” She frowns a little in his direction. “You still don't trust her, huh?”

He looks at her from the corner of his eye. “Do you?”

“Not really,” she admits. The only person she trusts wholeheartedly is him. “Like you said, she stabbed your sister and then offered us a way to save her. It doesn't really scream trustworthy to me, but—”

“But?” he prompts when she stops talking.

“I don't know,” she says, thoughtful. “We're not dead yet, we should give her the benefit of the doubt for now.” He nods, doubtful, but she doesn't really blame him for that. “We'll have to draw our own conclusions until we go back, though.”

“Like what?”

“We have to assume that when we leave this world, our bodies have to go through something similar, too. The whole unconscious thing, I mean.”

“Why do we need to be aware of it?”

She shrugs. “I don't know. It could be useful in the future, if we don’t find your sister here. We shouldn't just—leave the world we are in if we're driving, for example, or if we are in any kind of danger. Hopefully all the other worlds are as peaceful as this one, but I'm not holding my breath.” Then, something else comes to her mind. “Do you have some kind of headache?”

“No, just when I woke up. Why?” He frowns a little and his eyes dart from the road to her face. “Do you have one?”

“Yeah,” she confesses, and his face grows worried, but he returns his eyes to the road. “It's nothing I can't handle and it’s definitely not the same pain I felt after Josephine, I just—” She sighs. “I know we don't have control about how the first person wakes up on another world, but we should just—wait for the second to react, not wake you up… or me, until we are ready. That way we are giving our brains some time to process all the new memories and it’s not overwhelming.”

He nods, but then his mouth sets on a thin line. “But—are you sure you're okay?”

Clarke gives him a small, reassuring smile. “I am better now, after that shower. It was just an observation.”

He nods back, but she can tell that he's still worried the entire drive to the gym where his sister works.

His mind is somewhere else, but she can still see the interest in his eyes when he watches the streets. They are on another world and she knows that, but it looks so similar to the one who was portrayed on the movies that existed on the Ark, and it’s almost as if they’d traveled back in time and not to another planet. He must be thinking the same.

It's weird, to see all the stuff from a different time and place and somehow being used to it. Everything is new to Clarke but it feels familiar thanks to the memories she has from this place and from being in the City of Light.

It only takes them a few minutes more to arrive to Octavia’s gym, and once they are there it’s easy to find her, their memories making the task easier for them. She's training, but instead of getting ready for battle she's just having fun and when she notices their presence her face brightens with a mischievous look. She returns her gaze to her partner and it's with a start that Clarke recognizes Lincoln. Bellamy freezes at her side and she reaches for his hand, giving him a small squeeze that lets him breathe again. Clarke hears Octavia saying that she'll be back in a minute before jogging in their direction, her ponytail bouncing with each step. The grin she offers them is happy and unburdened, but a bit confused when she reaches them. Sweat covers her forehead and she's panting a little.

There are no signs of any mark on her cheek and neck, the place Hope told them to look at, and Clarke is disappointed to see it.

“Hey, guys, what's up?” she asks. She looks at Clarke, raising an eyebrow. “I honestly thought you would confine my brother to your bed for the entire weekend.” At their confused looks, she rolls her eyes, exasperated. “Come on, guys. We have a group chat where we talk about you behind your backs. Emori sent a text a few minutes ago; of course I know you are together now.” She gives her brother a sharp grin and wiggles her eyebrows, teasing. “You are one step closer to getting married, big brother.”

Bellamy laughs awkwardly and rubs the back of his neck. He looks so uncomfortable that it doesn't matter the way her heart clenches at it, she just wants to take him away from this place as fast as she can, so she searches for something that can help them in this Clarke's brain, finding it almost immediately.

“I was here just to pick up my sweater from the other day.”

“Oh, yeah!” Octavia says in surprise, and Bellamy looks at her with the same feeling in his eyes. “I totally forgot about it. You're lucky I have it on my locker, wait a second,” she tells them both before running to—well, where her locker is, Clarke suspects.

When she’s left alone with Bellamy, all she wants to do is break the awkwardness that’s settled between them, the heaviness in the air that threatens to suffocate them after Octavia’s words, but she has no idea how to do it.

He's about to say something when they see Octavia returning and he closes his eyes for a second, taking a deep breath.

“You could've waited until I gave it to you,” she grumbles when she reaches them, unaware of the tension in the air, giving Clarke her sweater. “You're flirting in my gym, guys, come on. Go to your apartment and jump my brother there, Clarke. I don't want to see it with my own eyes.”

The both try to deny it, but Octavia is having none of it and she just tells them to leave. It's not like they can defend themselves, when she knows that they slept together here, so they just share a look and take the chance, leaving as fast as they can.

* * *

“It doesn’t have to be weird, right?” she asks after a few minutes of silence on the car. The ease she always feels in his presence is nowhere to be seen; their silences are stilted and uncomfortable, and it’s killing her a little. Every time one of them tries to start a conversation everything feels awkward and she _hates_ it.

“What?”

“You know what,” she mutters, without looking at him and instead looking outside the window, pretending to be searching for something that isn’t there.

It was hard to wake up in this world, dressed only in Bellamy’s shirt and underwear, but she had tried to put it aside so they could focus on the task at hand. When he woke up terrified, she forgot almost entirely about the situation they were in, and it wasn’t hard not to mention it until Octavia did it.

Clarke can feel his eyes on her, but this silence feels thoughtful, not awkward.

After a few seconds of thinking about it, he says, hesitant, “It’s not… weird, is it?”

She turns her head so fast to look at him that her neck hurts. “What?”

He licks his lips and his gaze goes back to the road, a little nervous. “I mean… we are friends, right? Good friends,” he adds, “It’s not weird for us to be together on another world is it?”

There’s something in his voice that she can’t decipher, but she doesn’t want to give away how she feels about it. She studies him for a few seconds, but this time is hard to know what he’s thinking. “You really believe that.”

“Yeah,” he breathes, looking at her for a second, a little scared, like he thinks it’s weird for her, but she makes sure that he can read her expression, and he relaxes immediately when he sees her face. “You know the reason I didn’t insist for you to stay in Sanctum after you talked with Madi?”

“Because Madi had convinced me already and you knew there was no way I wouldn’t go?” she offers, hesitantly, rubbing her temple a little with her fingers as discreetly as she can; she doesn’t want him to notice that her headache is a little worse than she let on.

He shakes his head. “Gabriel told me that day that he didn’t want to come because our mission was to save Octavia. That he probably wouldn’t exist wherever and whenever she was, but that I was her brother, and I would be able to do it.” He offers her a wry smile. “He thought you and I would be able to find her because we have a connection, that Octavia told him that we are always finding each other.” Bellamy clenches his jaw, and shrugs one of his shoulders. The line of his jaw is distracting for a minute, and she blinks away some inappropriate thoughts that cross her mind to hear what he has to say next. “I guess I’ve never considered it like that. I always thought that we keep losing each other, but—they were right. We are always finding each other no matter what, and I knew we would do that once we entered the Anomaly, but—I guess I should’ve expected something like this.”

“Like this? That we could be together?”

“Yeah.”

Clarke nods a little, smiles sadly when she looks back at the window. She doesn’t know what the hell she was expecting. It’s not like he was going to say that he had been in love with her in the past and it was totally normal to see that they were a couple in another world.

It would be her breaking point, she thinks, and it would ruin their friendship for good, to know for sure that there was a chance in their past for them; that she could’ve taken it and she didn’t. That she never got to experience how it felt like to be with Bellamy Blake when she could, and now it’s not an option anymore. To look him in the eye after knowing that… she doesn’t think she’s strong enough to take it.

But that shouldn’t matter now. He’s back, and he’s her friend, and that’s all she needs. It has to be enough to have him in her life like that. _It has to._

But it doesn’t matter how many times she repeats that in her mind on the way home, she can’t convince her heart and head of it. Not when her soul aches so much to have him in every possible way.

If feels selfish, to want more than she already has after the things she’s done. But she still can long for it, even knowing that the chances of getting it are low.

“You should go to sleep,” Bellamy tells her when they arrive to their apartment, closing the door behind them.

She looks up in surprise. “What?”

“Don’t think I didn’t notice you touching your head and closing your eyes every time you could,” he says dryly. He softens when she winces a little. “I know that you want to get out of here as fast as you can, but nothing is going to happen to us if we stay here for a few more hours. Like I said, I don’t trust everything Hope said, and I don’t want to make anything worse if it turns out that your headache is still because of Josephine.”

She’s about to argue, but he’s as stubborn as she is and probably won’t write the marks they need until she accepts, so she sighs and makes herself comfortable on the couch, raising an eyebrow at him. “Happy?”

He frowns. “Don’t you want to enjoy the bed? We don’t know when we’ll have another chance like this.”

It sounds good, now that he’s said it, but her eyes are already closing. “I’m fine,” she says back, but it’s more of a yawn.

He snorts. “Sleep well, Clarke.”

When she wakes up, they share a meal, a few words and then they get to work. They don’t talk while Clarke sketches and then adds the details of the drawing on a canvas they found in the apartment; Bellamy just waits patiently on the sidelines while she works on it and when it’s his turn to write the marks on the paper, she waits for him. It’s past midnight by the time they finish and form the circle with the stones Hope gave them like she told them to. The last step is just to burn the paper so they can open the door and go to the next world.

Their silence doesn’t feel heavy this time, it’s just—them. Knowing what the other is thinking and sharing a glance while the fire consumes the piece of paper, waiting for an explosion or some kind of apocalypse looming over them.

And then everything goes black.


End file.
